


Home.

by sleazoid



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Future, Angst with a Happy Ending, Domestic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-23 19:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleazoid/pseuds/sleazoid
Summary: A dead man inserts himself into a life that's already being lived. Gradual progress through five stages.





	Home.

_ i: pinned_

The first strike is effortless in all its bent up rage and surprise. Muscle contractions, adrenaline, thousands upon thousands of specifically engineered nerve endings making it happen, yet — 

It doesn’t connect.

Fist flying just left of a cheekbone, a new one is launched in a blink of an eye. It is unhinged, it is primal in a way things rarely are these days, fueled only by an instinct long since forgotten yet still as honed as it once was made to be.

Life has been good for a year or seven; no near apocalypses, no long dead nemeses stalking from the shadows; just him and the dirt in his lungs and the air in his hair and the restless feeling of needing to go home with none to return to. It’s all been familiar in its unfamiliarity, he’s been learning to live anew and found he’s unable to. Nothing has changed yet nothing of the old remains, and every day the Planet finds a new way to shit on his platter.

_Do expect the unexpected_, he was told once, but Cloud has always likened himself a fighter; taking the tomorrow by its scruff and meddling it around ‘til it’s shaped to his purposes is what he does. Usually the sinkholes on the road lack span to make him stop and turn around and give up, but tonight’s pressing it an inch too far.

So he swings again. Muscle contractions, adrenaline, nerve endings — 

The fist is caught and stopped, energy dissolving into thin air. It’s being held a few inches off a man’s face in a leather-clad hand, and the only indication Cloud had turned a lifetime’s worth of loss and agony and uncertainty into a physical reaction is a sheaf of auburn hair quietly swinging between the leather and the face.

With a voice cold and heart colder, Cloud opens his mouth. The original reflex is still there. “I’m going to kill you.” 

Genesis, the curve ball in the midst of the routine, takes in what’s presented and nods once, as if accepting whatever’s given. With the colours on him — bright red, deep maroon, framed with black and silver, always silver — still a bit faded, the icy blue eyes sting like needles. 

_I hate needles_, Cloud decides, there and then, and looks away.

“Feisty,” is the first and the last thing Genesis says before the third blow lands and like a sack of potatoes Cloud last remembers him as, falls to the parquet. There he is left, a _thump_ of a body hitting the ground still ringing on the empty hallway walls as he’s sidestepped and ignored.

Having not expected the unexpected, Cloud flees and leaves the hurt behind, telling himself he’ll face this when he’s ready. It takes him a month to return, and Genesis is still there; not on the floor, but in the kitchen, leather now familiar cotton and hair tied behind his neck, making himself a fixed thorn in the flesh of Cloud’s existence.

_ii: caved_

The cottage in a shadow of a big tree becomes unthinkable for a while. Dread carves a cavity through Cloud’s caged chest and makes a dent in his armor with a loud enough bang for others to notice; he becomes a shadow thrown across Tifa’s bathroom tiles and another pair of dirty soles aboard Highwind, takes on as many hunts off Reeve as humanly possible and meets a Wutaian princess under a fall of cherry petals. 

Everyone questions, no one asks. None of the inquires are worded in a way he can answer. 

Postponing the inevitable makes him a place in the lives he once left behind, but just as before, it quickly grows dangerous. The moment there’s an unassuming extra plate at Tifa’s antique dinner table marks the date he’s stayed for too long, and before the sun lowers beyond the horizon he’s on the road again.

No matter where he comes from, where he’s going after or on whose intents, a fragrance of leather is there to greet him. First two times they bypass each other, only the lights in the living room thrown across the corridor walls tell Cloud he’s yet to rid himself of the guest, but the third time the sheen blues meet his and the urge to tear is back. 

Genesis seems to feel comfortable enough to have conquered the bedroom, books aligned to the west wall like a stack of bricks, the wardrobe raided beyond recognition. Curtains never before drawn now framing the carcass of a power plant urge Cloud to breathe, breathe, _breathe_ before the pinpricks proliferate all across his body.

“There’s tea in the kettle,” the bastard on the bed says as if he belongs there, as if he had any right to make himself at home in the house. “Someone called about a delivery in Corel, the info’s on the desk if you have time.”

The voice at the back of his head telling him to rip the intruder apart falls to silence.

“Yeah. Okay.” Breathe in, breathe out. “Thanks.”

So the third time Cloud leaves the shack he built on stolen ground, the cavity’s started to mend itself together. It’ll scar, it’ll hurt like the phantom limb does, and the dread is still there, but — 

He’s a little less afraid of returning, now.

_iii: caught _

A rhythm is found. 

It beats in pulses that sometimes leave the breath labored and heart awry, but when the right notes are found, every day life becomes a waltz already once memorized. The pair is new, toes get stepped on, but the whole ordeal becomes… Safer.

Too personal next to their newly found intimacy, past isn’t brought up. Genesis falls silent upon finding the rare evidence of past hurts, skittish fingers trailing along faces of pictures in the hidden photo albums. He doesn’t pry, piecing together faces and how abruptly they disappear from the next pictures, filling in the gaps with daydreams of happily ever afters.

His ashen skin is riddled with slashes, digs, stars and scrapes, stories of the past glories and hymns of what once mattered and didn’t. Cloud lacks curiosity by nature, is unable to piece together questions that might delve any deeper, and Genesis doesn’t divulge, but the set stalemate is built on appreciation and boundaries, not fear or nonchalance.

As they’re so prone to, the winds change direction. Again on the bedroom bed, surrounded by throw pillows and papers and photographs and clinking bottles of local cider, an idol of craze and lost fame lays with reddish locks as a halo around his head, giddy and flustered, wearing a crown shed by the evening sun.

“How?” Cloud asks, petting down the ruffles of a tacky, tacky pillow case. He is met with laughter.

Raising his hand towards the ceiling, Genesis spreads his skeletal fingers as to grab. “I once loved the Goddess,” he says, “and now the Goddess loved me.”

Like a hawk’s talons attacking a rodent, the fingers are splayed towards Cloud. In a moment of clarity, fickle nerves and numbness of alcohol, Genesis steals a flesh hand into his, lays it onto his chest and shuts his eyes.

“Why?” Cloud asks, fingers now squished between frozen fingers and against a collar of a shirt. Again, he is met with laughter.

“I once loved the Goddess,” Genesis says, sighs, and makes himself comfortable against the bedding, "and now I’ve decided to put that energy into something that might matter.”

_iv: smothered_

Changing of the seasons happens on the sly; one week it is cold enough for Genesis to stack a shirt on top of another, the next it’s too stifling to leave the house. Nature around the house starts blooming and the hours of sunlight stretch and stretch until a proper night no longer arrives. Cloud misses the childhood he doesn’t remember, the one that made his skin impenetrable to the northern winds and crisp slush, misses the freshness of new snow under his feet. 

Now the only ice he’s subjected to makes him feel warm all over.

Genesis has been dead for a decade, almost two, and has no problem mingling with the townspeople. He goes by Dix, visits a kiosk weekly and pays extra, flirts with the elderly and tricks the children with cards, and no one asks where he’s from or what he’s doing there. They know he lives in the house built in the shadow of an old tree, might or might not share it with a quiet blonde, and will help the village youngsters pierce their ears if necessary. That’s all that matters in the slowly but surely growing community.

The old Fair house has been sold, and in the way of new the old is being removed. Off the pile meant to be burned, Genesis brings home a tapestry, washes it, and hangs it on the hallway next to pictures of Cloud’s family and paintings done by a local artist. Like everything else that’s been used to mask the empty surfaces and echoing corners in the past five months, it’s tasteless and bright in its colours, and it makes Cloud cry when he finds it.

Careful not to scare him, the younger man is enveloped into arms like a mother would a child. The lack of intoxication makes their moves clumsy and withheld, but somehow Cloud’s handled onto the couch and draped into a duvet with no care for the heat outside. Back to chest, breath of air ruffling blonde spikes back and forth, body secured to another with wiry arms and locked feet, they lay there until the last of tonight’s light slips beyond the treeline and makes way for the last appearances of the moon for the summer.

_v: buried_

“I took up some gardening.”

Genesis’ legs are thrown against a fence, mud caking on white paint. In ragged, hanging clothing he hides himself these days, silver accents now gold in colour, hair long and his and not a reminder of someone else.

Chewing on a straw, Cloud basks in the sun. He’d noticed the increase of flora around, the yard now matching the furniture inside in colour. It’s all new and exciting, wild and lawless, not unlike the man who’d done the initial integration. “What’s new?”

“The samplings in the front.” No longer hard leather and blood, just soft fabric and warmth. Crow’s feet around his eyes deepen as he smiles. “The apple trees.”

Cloud glances at his companion. “Apple trees, huh.”

“Yeah. I hope you don’t mind.”

He really, really doesn’t mind.

**Author's Note:**

> *slaps my nuts so hard they dislocate and fly to the orbit* if squeenix is going to write genesis out of canon then im going to write canon out of genesis..... checkmate atheists..... i just wanted to write a line about genesis' long hair and how tacky his taste on interior designing is..... that's literally the only reason this exists.
> 
> this work is greatly inspired by "[The Likes of You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/62103)" by Thorne and "[The Man Who Smelled of Galbana Lilies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268122)" by whomever posted it before deleting their account. thank you !
> 
> (if u have questions, hit me up at [1997square](https://1997square.tumblr.com) on tumblr !!!)


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